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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Mohamed Yehia Habash, Nabil M. A. Ayad, Abd Elhady A. Ammar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 9 | September 2022 | Pages 1484-1495
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2035645
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In nuclear facilities, it is very significant for the monitoring and control system to accurately monitor and detect harmful radiation inside and outside the nuclear facility in a real-time manner to protect personnel, visitors, and the environment. This is because of the effect of ionizing radiations on the genetic material deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA contained in the human body and other living organisms. As a result, harmful genetic mutations can be caused and passed on to the next generations. In this study, a framework based on wireless sensors and actors’ networks is proposed to monitor the radiation levels inside and outside the nuclear facility. The sensors network is used to sense the environment, and its measurements are sent to a central device which makes the necessary analysis and passes this information to the monitoring and control system of the nuclear facility. A sensor reading validation algorithm is used to validate the sensors’ readings before being sent to the monitoring and control units; that is, to distinguish between the real events and the sensors’ faults, and finally, to have accurate and trusted measurements. After the sensors’ measurements are validated, they are tested against threshold values to detect new events and trigger the alarm system of the monitoring and control system to alert the operator to take corrective actions. Finally, the framework includes a system to enable the workers and visitors to be notified about the radiation levels in their and nearby areas. This technique is tested and investigated using the Castalia simulator. The simulation results are of great importance and show high event detection accuracy, low communication overheads between sensor devices, and low power consumption for the sensor devices.